Daily Inspiration Quote by E. M. Forster

Forster’s line lands like a compliment that turns, mid-sentence, into a scalpel. “Charm” sounds warm and human until he frames it as “decoration,” something applied, curated, and ultimately detachable. The barb is aimed less at charm itself than at the social machinery that rewards it: the way likability becomes an accessory for navigating class, sex, and respectability in the Edwardian world Forster knew intimately.

The gender math is the provocation. “Most men and nearly all women” reads like a sly admission of asymmetry: men can sometimes get away with bluntness, competence, money, or status; women, hemmed in by stricter expectations, are pushed to make charm part of their uniform. That “nearly” is doing work, too. It leaves room for the unruly woman who refuses the decorative role and accepts the penalties, a recurring Forster interest: the person who can’t or won’t perform the required self.

Decoration implies surface, and Forster is obsessed with surfaces that masquerade as morals. Charm, as social sheen, can conceal cruelty, cowardice, or empty privilege; it can also be a survival tactic for those without power. The sentence has Forster’s characteristic liberal suspicion: he wants authenticity and “only connect,” but he’s clear-eyed about how often connection is mediated by performance.

Placed in Forster’s cultural moment, it’s a critique of polite society’s aesthetic politics. Charm isn’t condemned as evil; it’s indicted as costly, unevenly demanded labor - and as a reminder that “pleasantness” is often a system, not a personality.